What to do? At the moment I'm just picking the point of view that has the most demanding moments in the scene, and occasionally using a slightly overlapping time line. That is, when I switch point of view, I might recap a bit of the scene before - usually in summary and character thought.
I hope to have time to discuss a few techniques I've seen for shifting point of view. Robert Crais has been combining third person and first person in his novels lately. Philip Craig and Robert Tapply have been doing even more interesting things in their jointly written two-narrator novels. And then there is good old omniscient....
Running Total: 18202 Words.
In Today's Pages: George lets something slip. Karla hears the tune from Charade playing in her head.
2 comments:
I'll have to check out the Craig & Tapply work. I love Robert Crais and admire his skill. My most recent novel is in multiple POVs. Someone told me that the scene should be in the POV of the person to whom the scene and the outcome of it means the most. (Sometimes hard to decide). Someone else said if your protagonist is in the scene, it must be in their POV. Not sure I agree.
I definitely don't agree, because it's not that simple. (And that would exclude multi-pov stories, since nearly everyone I have heard say that, I've also hear say that a story can only have one protagonist.)
Maybe I'll talk about point of view choice later on this week. It's an interesting art. I'd just say if you really want to see a great use of shifting points of view, many of Donald Westlake's caper comedies really point up the weakness of any theory about point of view having to be from the protagonist's point of view, or even having to be from the point of view where what's going on most matters.
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